A 74-year-old man who had been on the run for 40 years for firearms offences related to the Troubles has been jailed in Belfast.
Despite a plea for clemency from Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s first minister, Samuel Tweed from Newtownards, Co Down, was sentenced on Friday to two and a half years in prison.
He was arrested in April 1974 after the house he had been seen driving towards in East Belfast was searched. Inside the property in Jocelyn Avenue, police found an arsenal of weapons to be used by loyalist paramilitaries.
The cache included six .45 calibre revolvers, two .22 calibre pistols and and a 12 bore sawn-off shotgun.
Tweed escaped custody the following month, when a group of teenagers burst into Belfast magistrates court claiming there was a bomb in the building. In the panic and confusion he managed to give his prison warders the slip and flee.
He went into hiding and eluded justice until 2012, when lawyers representing him asked the Police Service of Northern Ireland if there were any outstanding charges against their client.
The PSNI later arrested and charged Tweed, sparking a political campaign by unionists, including Robinson, to win leniency. A number of letters were read out in court pleading for Tweed not to be jailed.
Judge Philip Babington, however, told the former loyalist paramilitary: “These were, and are, serious offences. Albeit you were younger but that does not diminish the seriousness of the offences in any way at all.
“I am satisfied that you have lived a lawful and law-abiding life over the last 40 years. However, that does not mean that the offences are any less serious. Far from it.”
